The Home Winemaker’s Companion: Secrets, Recipes, and Know-How for Making 115 Great-Tasting Wines Reviews

A comprehensive, start-to-finish reference guide for the home winemaker. From making your very first batch of kit wine to mastering advanced techniques for making wine from grapes, this book covers it all! With Gene Spaziani’s clear instructions, you’ll find it easy to make any of 115 delectable wines, from chablis, chardonnay, and zinfandel to rioja, merlot, and pinot noir — even port, sherry, and champagne.

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Retired Battalion Chief with 27yrs of experience in the Fire Service. Serving the people of Hudson County New Jersey in a department called North Hudson Regional Fire & Rescue protecting West New York, Union City, Weehawken, North Bergen, and Guttenburg. This area is one of the most densely populated in the the United States. The department is operating with 10 Engine companies, 4 Ladder companies, 1 Rescue company, 1 Safety Officer, 3 Battalion Chief's and 1 Deputy Chief. Some of my specific
skill areas are Staff development and leadership, Emergency response procedures, Standard operating procedure writing, Training Instruction, Incident management, Radio communications, Fire Safety, Fire Prevention

Mark and Tess Szamatulski
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July 13, 2013

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful

If you only buy one book on winemaking, this should be it!, January 8, 2001

This review is from: The Home Winemaker’s Companion: Secrets, Recipes, and Know-How for Making 115 Great-Tasting Wines (Paperback)

We are the owners of Maltose Express, the largest winemaking and homebrew store in Connecticut. Whenever a winemaker is looking for a winemaking book, whether the customer is a novice or an experienced winemaker, this book is the one we sell them. It is written by a home-winemaker who knows his craft; after all, he has been making award-winning wine for over 40 years. Not only is Mr. Spaziani a past president ot the American Wine Society and teaches college classes on winemaking and appreciation, but he is also ranked as one of the top ten national home wine-makers ever! This is one author of a winemaking book that doesn’t just sit in front of a computer and write. He makes alot of wine and has the purple hands in September and October to prove it! Follow his advice, methods and use his expertise to make your own luscious and award winning wines. Buy this book, your next wine might be a gold medal winner!

This review is from: The Home Winemaker’s Companion: Secrets, Recipes, and Know-How for Making 115 Great-Tasting Wines (Paperback)

Gene Spaziani and Ed Halloran have written a book that needed to be written. The first three chapters are the obligatory “how to make wine” chapters (“Getting Started,” “Essential How-Tos” and “Wine from Kits”). These have been done better by others, but the book would be incomplete without them.

The meat of this book begins with chapter 4, “Wine from Concentrates.” And what a chapter it is, covering 13 specific white wine concentrates (Chenin Blanc to Vino Blanc) and 13 specific red wine concentrates (Barbera to Zinfandel), with recipes and step-by-step instructions for each (all suspiciously similar, but if the shoe fits….).

Chapter 5 is “Wine from Juices,” and it does a superb job with 15 white grape juices (Chardonnay to Vidal Blanc), 15 red grape juices (Barbera to Zinfandel again, but many in between are different) and one blush.

Chapter 6, “White Wine from Grapes,” covers 20 great grapes, from Aurora French-American Hybrid to Vidal Blanc French-American Hybrid, with some real classics in between. Chapter 7 is predictably “Red Wine from Grapes,” covering another 20 grapes from Alicante-Bouschet to–again–Zinfandel, but the in-betweens are both classic and unusual.

Chapter 8, “Wine from Fruit,” offers up 14 classic non-grape wines–from Apple to Strawberry. I found some of the ingredients thought-provoking(Epsom salts, for example, in fresh-crushed apple juice), but I found their choices of yeast less than inspiring (their heavy reliance on sweet mead yeast was a bit unimaginative, in my opinion).

Chapter 9, “Sparkling and Fortified Wines,” offers a very good primer on these subjects, with more emphasis on the latter than the former. Chapter 10 is “Trouble-Shooting,” but this, like the first three chapters, has been done better by others.

Criticisms aside, this book is a valuable adjunct to any winemaker’s library. Where else can you find recipes for Cayuga French-American Hybrid, Lemberger red or Morio Muskat, all in the same volume? You can bet my copy is already well-thumbed….

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This review is from: The Home Winemaker’s Companion: Secrets, Recipes, and Know-How for Making 115 Great-Tasting Wines (Paperback)

I am a newer wine maker and as such, I found this book to be just what I needed to help get the job done! Other books I own were much more difficult to follow or they went off on some tangent or were incomplete. The Home Winemaker’s Companion achieves exactly what is needed to help anyone make good drinkable wine and have fun. Thank You!